SkyDrive updated with new features for 2013

Microsoft’s cloud based storage solution; SkyDrive has picked up its first set of updates as we go into 2013. The service has quickly evolved to become the hub for nearly every product in Microsoft’s line up. Windows Phone has always been deeply connected and the past year has seen Windows and Office hook into the mesh.

The public face of SkyDrive is through a web interface and it's here that many will create folders and share them. The team has improved sharing, speed and touch responsiveness to the latest update.

Since Microsoft focused all its platforms around SkyDrive to provide the glue to make all their services work nicely together plenty of changes have been arriving. Recently we saw a facelift to the service to make it better suited to touch and the team released an app for the Xbox360 console for photo and video viewing duties. Here is what they have to say on the latest set of tweaks.

Sharing improvements..

Integrated view of sharing permissions

SkyDrive offers a number of different ways to share your files—email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or simply generating a link to send to whomever you want. As more and more SkyDrive files are being shared, people are often using more than one of these at a time. To make this easier, we’ve unified all sharing-related info and tasks into a single screen. So now when you select a document and click Share in the command bar, you’ll see all the different ways to share the item as well as who has access.

Improved selection for touch-based devices

If you’re using touch to interact with SkyDrive.com, you can now select an item or multiple items by swiping on the item to the left or right—similar to interactions on a new Windows 8 PC.

Drag and drop updated..

Improved drag-and-drop support

In addition to being able to drag and drop files into your SkyDrive, you can now move files to anywhere in the hierarchy of your SkyDrive by using the bread crumb bar as the target. As you can see below, I’m moving a PDF in my Scans folder one level up to the Documents folder.

Finally, we’re also releasing a number of improvements under the hood which won’t be visible to you, but are designed to make SkyDrive.com even faster and more reliable. All of these features are releasing today and should be available in your SkyDrive soon.

We’re really glad to see the SkyDrive team stepping up so soon after the holidays with this update. The service has come on in leaps and bounds over the last 12 months; we’d still love to see a SkyDrive client that can sync with Windows RT. We certainly hope that the performance of uploads and downloads improves with this latest set of changes too.

Let us know what you think of the service and what you would like to see from it going forward, we know that the team are keen Windows Phone Central readers so sound off in the comments below.

Yet. It's coming this year, along with apps for iOS and Android, as well as other features announced. My guess is it will come before the next major update, so before E3 this year. Hopefuly much sooner.

What would you do with them outside of your Xbox though? I have no problem not being able to access my Xbox saves on anything but my Xbox. All that would do is open the world of hacked-save files and Achievement scammers.

DAFUQ? They didn't bother to compile the SkyDrive sync client to ARM yet?
And I was almost ready to replace my clunky W501 with a Surface this week. Thank the gods I was sick and postponed visting a store.

It's fantastic to see the SkyDrive team continually updating the service with new features, and they're doing it right... bringing new features incrementally each month rather than forcing us to wait for rare, big updates. The rest of the teams at Microsoft need to take lessons from them.

Can we get an update on the WP8 SkyDrive that actually fixes the problem of photos not being able to be displayed. Everything else works, every other file works. Just photos. Thumbnails don't show and when I tap on a file there's an error message saying "this file can't be displayed, connect to cellular or wi-fi". I'm pretty sure I have 4G and a strong WiFi signal.
It's a ridiculous bug that shouldn't even exist.

Unfortunately, Skydrive still keeps our data unencrypted on their servers. So, if they misconfigure something: oopsie -- it could all become public. If someone accesses their servers: oopsie. If MIBs show up with a warrant: oopsie. And, for icing, since none of Microsoft's programs for WP8 handle password protection, we can't even keep things secure that way.

Oh please. Have you seen Microsofts data centres? You know, the barbed wire, the CCTV surveilance.
Microsoft are independently security checked, they run business on this for Office 365 which would not be sold if it were not secure you chump.
Who is going to misconfigure your sharing permissions? Really your just being an idiot.
WP8 has PIN protection. Use it if you want protection.

So, this is what passes for reasoned discourse here: "you chump," "your [sic] just being an idiot?"
WP8 having PIN protection (via a form of BitLocker) isn't the issue. The issue is that between our home computers and our phones (both of which are in our control) our data is sitting on someone else's servers (outside of our control) in plain text. That should change.

i do wish i could have a folder in my skydrive account that i can have a password on. something for my private stuff. i don't like that all of my pictures populate into my photos app on my htc 8x. i'd like somewhere private within skydrive to keep some specific things so that if a friend picks up my phone he/she can't see ALL of my photos...

Log in on Skydrive (web), create a folder in the root, right click the folder and select properties, then change the type of folder to "Documents". Everything you save there will not be displayed on the pictures hub.

we still cant share our folder to friends who dont have a hotmail/sky drive account. They can download individual files/pics from the folder, but if the folder is 1 GB, it is useless. They have to sign in. The main reason among many, which is stopping me from subscribing to sky drive. I am better off creating and managing my own cloud storage. costs $250 for 2 TB, but totally worth it.

Despite the fact MS shouldn't care about the data I'm storing on their systems until I'm doing something illegal, the impact of a locked account is far too high: you are losing your mails, calenders, contacts, purchased apps, etc.

In fact, when using SkyDrive with services like "Rooms" under WP8, you have no full control over the data that is stored within your SkyDrive account.

I also want to keep in mind: you are currently not allowed to save any minor in your addressbook or uploading pictures of minors in SkyDrive! Therefore, Windows Phone is unusable for any parent and many others! (Does Jessica Alba know that?)

Prohibited Uses

You will not upload, post, transmit, transfer, distribute or facilitate distribution of any content (including text, images, sound, video, data, information or software) or otherwise use the service in a way that:

[...]

is designed to solicit, or collect personally identifiable information of any minor (anyone under 18 years old), including, but not limited to: name, email address, home address, phone number, or the name of their school.